This past weekend was the annual Austrian Scholar’s Conference held in Auburn Alabama at the Mises Institute. It was a great event. I thought I would write a follow up to the brief talk I gave discussing graduate school. My discussion was limited to general suggestions about what types of research to do (economic history) but young students have almost no specific information on how to prepare for graduate school. So here it goes…
The following list are books I wish I had read before my first year of graduate school. I don’t want to fool anyone about graduate school at GMU or anywhere else. The first year of classes is not fun, it’s hard work, more work than any academic experience i’d had before. Reading these books before hand would have made my life in that first year easier. You might ask, “but Dan, aren’t these basically the text books for the first year coursework?” Yes, but text book reading is only a small fraction of the material that you should be familiar with in order to succeed in these preliminary courses. The less time during the year that you have to devote to reading these boring survey texts the better, and the more time you can devote to reading the seminal and contemporary journal articles that fill out the literature in those areas.
Microeconomics:
Any advanced and thorough price theory book will do the job. Here are some of the best:
1. David Friedman, Price Theory
and it’s free online here!
2. Milton Friedman, Price Theory, A Provisional Text
3. Herschleifer and Herschleifer, Price Theory and Applications
4. Alchian and Allen, University Economics, Elements of Inquiry
5. Armen Alchian, Exchange and Production: Competition, Coordination and Control
Macroeconomics
These texts follow school of thought or history of thought approaches; a superior way to understand macro modeling if you ask me. The clearly define the boundaries of the schools and link the transitions from school to school by giving historical context in both the real world and the economic debates of the time.
1. Snowden and Vane, Modern Macroeconomics, Its Origins, Development and Current State.
The older edition, A Modern Guide to Macroeconomics will do just as well as the enw edition
2. Paul Romer, Advanced Macroeconomics
Math and Metrics:
1. Schaum’s, Outline Introduction to Mathematical Economics
2. Schaum’s Outline Introduction to Statistics and Econometrics.
3. Ramu Ramanathan, Introductory Econometrics with Applications
4. Wooldridge Jeffrey, Introductory Econometrics: A Modern Approach
Thanks to Geoff Lea for the metrics book suggestions. I hope this was helpful…
Awesome list. I suggest Peter Kennedy’s Guide to Econometrics. It was a great help for me (and cheap).
i’m an undergraduate student fm india. i think the list is very good. can i have some opinions on the following:
a.koutsoyiannis,
hal varian,
g. mankiv (all microeconomics) and
e.shapiro (macroeconomics)
The curriculums of economics departments really worry me. My comments refer to the curriculums and not your ability to arrange a list.
Are we reading these books to critique them or for “gasp’ economic knowledge?
I’m not an Austrian but if there is one book everyone should read in my opinion its Hazlitt’s “Economics in One lesson”.
It’s an easy read and it takes the reader to the core of what economics is about – how humans act to obtain means/goals.
From here students can choose to read the original tests from which hazlitts book is based.
Jus my opinion of course and by no means the correct one.
I used to teach from a few of the books in your list and from my experience the students may have gained a degree but they certainly didnt develop any meanigful understanding of economics.
Of interest too is that most of this list are way past their useby date when it comes too monetary economics and macro theory.
Fixed exchange rates, fixed Money supplies, and a Money Stock that appears from nowhere are just some of the fallacies students will be indoctrinated with.
I appologize if my tone is agressive but I’d suggest students could do much better reading the vast array of material available at the http://www.mises.org or by spending a few hours a week in the blogs here where good people do great work.
cheers